


Not Yours To Save

by fleurdelisee



Category: Doctor Who, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurdelisee/pseuds/fleurdelisee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It had sounded like a good idea to ask the TARDIS to show him someone whose life he couldn’t possibly ruin. It sounded safe and like exactly what he needed after, well, after the last 5oo years of his life to be honest. Maybe somehow, somehow, he might be able to make someone’s life better rather than ruining it. He had doubts when he saw he had landed in the middle of a rebellion in the Paris of 1832, but when he saw him staggering out of the café and holding himself up with a hand on the wall, he knew right away that this was the reason why he was there."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Yours To Save

**Author's Note:**

> I put the entire blame on a gifset that's been going around Tumblr. You know which one. If I could link posts in here, I would give credit where it's due, but alas, I haven't figured out how to do it.

The Doctor has seen a lot of things in his life. He has seen planets orbiting around suns that sparkle like diamonds and waterfalls in space; he has seen blue people and green people and people that look like dogs but talk, and people that bark instead of talking. He’s seen the birth of civilizations and the downfall of others, the rise and fall of entire races happening within a second. He has seen things most minds cannot fathom, wars that transcend dimensions. He has seen good things and bad things and his lot of messes but, even then, the one standing in front of him manages to be impressive.

The man looks as surprised as the Doctor to still be standing up, eyes bleary and unfocused, dark curls as unruly as his clothes, on which dark red wine stains are blooming like bullet wounds. 

“What—” he asks, voice as unsteady as his body. His eyes focus on the Doctor and a frown appears on his face. He scratches his head.

It had sounded like a good idea to ask the TARDIS to show him someone whose life he couldn’t possibly ruin. It sounded safe and like exactly what he needed after, well, after the last 5oo years of his life to be honest. Maybe somehow, somehow, he might be able to make someone’s life better rather than ruining it. He had doubts when he saw he had landed in the middle of a rebellion in the Paris of 1832, but when he saw him staggering out of the café and holding himself up with a hand on the wall, he knew right away that this was the reason why he was there.

The man takes a step forward and the Doctor smiles, which only intensifies the man’s frown.

“I heard a noise—how d’you get here?” He looks around slowly. “T’whole block is barricaded.” He eyes the Doctor up and down, his body tensing. “Are you—which side? I will raise the alarm, don’t think I won’t.”

“Neither. I’m the Doctor,” he says with a bigger smile, closing the distance between them and taking his hand to shake it.

“Grantaire,” the man replies, shaking his hand without much conviction.

“Hello, Grantaire. I’m here to change your life.”

“I doubt it.”

\---

Grantaire is too drunk when he first enters the TARDIS to react to anything. The Doctor places her in orbit around a small star and guides him to the sick bay he’s pretty sure didn’t exist before and then waits for Grantaire to come back. The TARDIS helps take care of him, providing what he needs before the Doctor even goes looking for it, and after a long day and the help of medicine that will not be invented for a few centuries after the man’s time, Grantaire is back on his feet.

He is thoroughly unimpressed by the TARDIS once his initial shock has worn off. Actually, the only emotions he seems to feel regarding being on a spaceship are annoyance with a side of anger.

“You abducted me!” he cries out when the Doctor explains where he is.

“I wouldn’t say ‘abduct’,” the Doctor says, trying to appease him. The TARDIS hates when people are screaming, she usually reacts by flying off to the middle of nowhere and shutting off the heating. “All I did was help you on my ship when you were too drunk to underst—alright, it sounds a lot like I abducted you, but let me explain—”

“Explain what? Everything is pretty clear to me. Take me back.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

“Why not? I don’t want to be here. I have nothing to do here.”

“All of time and space. We can go wherever you want, you only have to ask.”

Grantaire’s eyes narrow. “Even if what you’re saying is true, which I doubt, I’ve seen enough cities in my life to know it’s all the same shit everywhere. It’s a waste of time.”

“Ah, but see, we have all the time in the universe! We can explore time itself if you think travelling to places is useless. I can show you a planet where the people experience time twice as fast as us. You can literally see them age in front of you if you wait long enough. I can—”

“All of time and space, you said? I know where I want to go.”

The Doctor grins and saunters to the console, waiting for Grantaire to tell him when and where he wants to go. “So?”

“Paris, June 5, 1832.”

The Doctor’s smile slips away and a smirk appears on Grantaire’s face.

“No,” the Doctor says sternly before programming in the first destination that comes to his mind. “Not yet.”

\---

He takes Grantaire on a tour of the Seven Wonders of the Universe (as decided by a hundred years long survey and which, given the instability of time at such a scale, only existed all at once for a decade, twenty years before the survey was over). Grantaire remains unaffected by most of them, a scathing remark tumbling out of his mouth every time the Doctor tries to hype up his interest. At least it gets him to admit that the Doctor isn’t lying about owning a time machine. He does so begrudgingly, but he does.

The Doctor persists despite Grantaire’s resistance, keeping him away from horrors and atrocities and visiting only the most beautiful, awe-inspiring corners of the universe. He endures the cynicism that seems to be Grantaire’s only mode of operation and waits for the moment he’ll break through his shell and rid him of the poison in his mind.

He loses his patience when Grantaire yawns while watching the birth of a galaxy.

“I’m out of options,” the Doctor snaps, storming back inside the TARDIS and angrily punching a button on the console. The TARDIS makes a loud noise and shuts her doors with a bang. “Is there anything you find interesting? Anything at all?”

“Yes,” Grantaire says calmly, almost serenely. He looks smug, like he’s proud that he won over the Doctor. He wasn’t even aware they were playing tug of war until he lost. “And it’s in Paris, on June 5, 1832.”

“The rebellion?”

Grantaire shakes his head. “No. One of its leaders.”

Cold dread spreads through the Doctor’s veins, painfully pumped by his hearts until he feels numb. Having faith in a person, he knows how that ends.

“Tell me about him,” he asks instead of the warnings he’s dying to give Grantaire.

And so Grantaire does, speaking with fervour, the last thing the Doctor expected to see, about a man with blond hair and blue eyes burning with a passion bright enough to rekindle the dying coals in the heart of the hardest of cynics. As he listens, the Doctor realizes that Grantaire already has his sun to orbit around and that the light he gives off pales in comparison to that of Enjolras. He can feel his hold on Grantaire slipping and he doesn’t try to hold onto it.

 

\---

The Doctor takes them to the Library, the last trick he has up his sleeve before he knows he’ll have to take him back. 

(And if he’s perfectly honest, there are things he would prefer if Grantaire found out on his own. He doesn’t think he can tell him what he knows Grantaire will find out if he takes him to the largest library in the universe four thousand years after his time.)

“Stay out of the sections that cover the history of the Earth before the 22nd century,” he warns Grantaire, knowing even as he speaks it that it’s an empty warning. “Spoilers.”

An hour later, he finds him sitting on the floor of the 19th century’s aisle, a large volume opened in his lap. From the look he gives the Doctor, he knows everything is over.

“They’re not even mentioned,” he says softly, watching as the Doctor sits down next to him.

“History is written about winners,” the Doctor says, shrugging when Grantaire looks at him. “I don’t make the rules. Sometimes the things we hold dearest are not even a blip in history.”

“We have to save them.”

The Doctor shakes his head and shuts his eyes, resting his head against the shelf behind him. He’s feeling the weight of his thousand years wearing him down as he’s having a conversation he feels like he’s had too many times before.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“Save him, at least.”

“I can’t,” the Doctor says and sighs, lifting his head back up and feeling his hearts break at the look on Grantaire’s face. “He has to die.”

“I don’t believe you,” Grantaire spits out, shutting the book roughly and sending a cloud of dust in the air between them. “We can’t let him die.”

“Technically, he’s already dead. This is the 51st century for the Earth.”

Grantaire growls and gets up, carelessly dropping the book on the floor. It falls with a dull thunk that echoes around the building. 

“What was the point of all this? What is the point of anything if he dies and isn’t remembered? Why did you take me away? I could’ve—” he trails off and the Doctor knows where his mind is going. 

The Doctor shuts his eyes again, denying the world and everything outside of him for just a second before everything inside reminds him that it needs to be forgotten, too. “His death is a fixed point in time. It has to happen. I can’t change it.”

“I don’t understand. Why does he have to die?”

“We all have to die someday, Grantaire.”

“I know,” he snaps, his fingers going through his hair roughly. “He could’ve done so much for the world, he shouldn’t die on a damned barricade, he—”

The Doctor can see the cogs turning in Grantaire’s head and he braces himself for what’s to come. “If I could do anything, I would. You have to believe me.”

“And why should I? All you’ve brought me was the worst choice I’ve ever had to make. You tried to make me better, but all that’s brought out is the fact that I’m a coward. Drunk, I wouldn’t have hesitated, but now—I don’t even value my life, why can’t I—”

“It doesn’t have to be now, Grantaire. I have a time machine. I can take you back three years from now and not a second will have passed. You don’t have to decide now.”

“I don’t care about you. You took me along against my will and flattered yourself that you were making me a better person, but you never stopped to ask me if I cared. I’m not your charity case, Doctor. I didn’t need saving.”

“Maybe I did,” the Doctor says in a voice so low he’s not sure Grantaire heard him.

“Take me back. He won’t die alone.”

\---

The Doctor watches from inside the TARDIS as Grantaire walks up to Enjolras as though he’s being pulled through the room by an invisible force, as though the soldiers pointing their guns at them are not there, and he only turns off the screen when he sees the smile on Grantaire’s face when Enjolras smiles and takes his hand.

Wanting to fix people was a stupid idea. People can fix themselves better without him.


End file.
